June 3, 2024 • 50 mins
The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson roasts the Republicans' defense of Justice Alito's actions. Talking Feds' Harry Litman analyzes Donald Trump being a convicted felon. Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith examines the media's coverage of the election.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump says he never said
locker up about Hillary Clinton. He did, in fact, stay
locker up about Hillary Clinton. We have such a great
show for you today talking Feds. Harry Littman is here
(00:21):
to talk Donald Trump convictions. Then we'll talk to Semaphores
Ben Smith about the media's coverage of the election. But
first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Ollie John Fast, and what a beautiful thing it is
to talk to you once again, as I do every day.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Ah, it is yet another day of justice. Alito telling
Democrats to go fuck themselves discuss.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I do believe that we have a system where the
three branches of are separate, our tripartite system, to use
a good three dollar word. But I also believe that
doesn't mean that he's not being a dick, and that
there's not a honestly incredibly troubling and dark underpinning to
this which he's basically saying to America, fuck you. I'm
(01:18):
gonna do what I can to help my boy Donald.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So let's talk about the second, because there's an oversight
question here, right. There are members in the Senate who
have oversight over.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
This, yeah, over the courts.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Right, Maybe not quite the way they would like, but
they certainly do. Let's pretend for a minute that they
was reversed and it was a Democrat.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Let's do Katanji Brown Jackson puts up a Black Lives
Matter flag? What do you think would happen with Fox?
What do you think would happened with the MAGA universe?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And say Republicans controlled the judiciary? H what do you
think would happen?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Take those hypotheticals for a moment, and I will describe
it to you in the technical term of public affairs
and politics, of a screaming, gigantic shit show of the
highest possible order. There would be nothing but chaos. And
oh my god, the American Republic is dying. How dare
she engage in this outrageous, unbelievably undignified behavior that is
(02:20):
reducing America's dignity in the courts? And I could almost
write the story for you of just how crappy they
would be about it. And you know what, it's not
like we don't know what they're going to say. They
are nothing if not utterly predictable.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, so Alito said he's not going to recuse. Robert said,
go fuck yourself. What do you think Dick Durbin should do? Now?
What would you do if you were Dick Durbin's chief
of staff?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Dick Durbin, He's in the horns of a slight dilemma.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yes, save American democracy or be a good guy.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, that's exactly it. It's like, is anybody still pretending that
American institutions are robust and the guardrails are fully intact?
Because if you are, I have a bridge to sell
you or several, because that is no longer a viable
position to have in the world today. No one for
a moment should think that we live in a world
(03:12):
where the institutions will hold, where the rules will be sustained,
where nothing could go wrong, because America is just too strong. Look,
and I've been calling the Supreme Court the red Court
for a while now. First, with this whole thing about
giving Trump all the time he needed to delay the
Jack Smith case on the immunity question, and the rest
of their actions as an overtly political branch of the
(03:33):
MAGA movement have sort of added up. I think it's
hard for Americans to kind of admit it to themselves.
There are even conservatives who are like, yeah, you know
what if the Democrats did this. There is a little
bit of hesitation on this, not a lot, but there's
a little bit of like a sense of like, is
this really how we're going to end this thing? Because
right now it's kind of how we're going to end
this thing.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Honestly, American democracy.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, it feels like we're not in a great spot
as a country. You know. Everybody keeps asking me today,
like tell me something cheerful, give me some good news.
I'm like, I'm a barrel of freaking laughs.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, but let's pause for a second because
I want to talk about this. There are a lot
of people who want everyone who listens to this podcast
to despair and to not bother and to tell you
that Trump has it, But in fact, Trump doesn't have it.
And I'm going to point to a political twenty twenty
(04:25):
four Dave Wasserman tweet twenty twenty four is a tale
of two electorates, and again this is something I've written
about ad nauseum. Same Biden leads forty nine forty five
among the most reliable voters, betrayals Trump forty one fifty
one among low mid engagement voters. So the point is
(04:47):
low mid engagement voters are likelier than high engagement peers.
They may not turn out. And if you look at
the bottom of the ticket, Democrats are brushing the Republican
in those Senate seeds and the House seats.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh listen, I will give people some good news. The
Senate races look increasingly optimistic. I think initially it felt
a little bit like Arizona might be a tie ballgame.
But now Ruben is starting to open up real numbers.
I think there are a number of arguments to be
made that the House number could end up being much
larger than we even think right now. And I think
(05:24):
that there's a weird reverse coattail effect here that we
need to consider. It may end up in some of
these states that the Democratic candidates North Carolina being one
of them, end up pulling Joe Biden over the line,
and it's normally the other way around. But I'll take it.
I will happily take it. At this point.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So reverse cotails is an idea that I first heard
from Amanda Lippman, who does Run for Something and if
you are despairing, Run for Something is an awesome organization
that helps candidates everyone from the dog walkers to the
state legislators to the House of Delegates.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
They're concouraging up and down the ballot.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And her theory of the case was that young local
voters would energize the electorate in a way that an
eighty one year old incumbent might not look.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I think there are going to be a lot of
voters out there this year that take a long damn
time to get home to the reality that this really
is not Donald Trump versus Gavin Newsom, or Donald Trump
versus Gretch Whitmer or somebody else. They're going to realize finally,
it's just Donald Trump. If you're going to vote for
Donald Trump as an eighteen to thirty year old, I
(06:34):
am not buying it. I'll be perfectly can that I'm
not buying that argument at this point. I think that
we are going to see people come home it. Maybe later,
but you know, I mean obviously, and as I always
tell people, there's no excuse for not every day, getting
up to beat the bad guys in the face. But
this is not a Donald Trump from twenty sixteen. This
is not a Donald Trump from twenty twenty. This is
(06:56):
a diminished and weird and less mentally capable and frankly,
I think I have no evidence of this, but I
feel this sense with Trump that there's a physical diminishment,
that there may be something wrong with Trump more than
we know, is what I'm trying to say. It feels
like he's.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Sick, right, I mean, people have been saying that for
like a million years.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It feels increasingly like this is a guy who's like
faking it to get through the.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Day, a man who knows. But I mean, I don't
want to speculate about his medical health. Only Republicans do
that about Biden. By the way, one of the things
I love so State of the Union, so Trump always
says Biden is dementias, dementia, he's sww, senile, he's diminished.
He gives all these speeches, but nobody watches them because
(07:42):
nobody gets verified news. The only clips that ever make
it onto social are you know, crazy lists that right,
or that are selectively edited. But I'll be curious after
this debate when Biden does really well, because though he
is not a gifted orator, he is not a complete lunatic,
so he will kill I think he'll do really well
(08:04):
in these debates, and Trump will say insane things, and
I think what will happen then is Trump World will
again say that he's on drugs, which, by the way,
if there was a drug that made demented people not demented,
I would give it to my mom. Like, this is
not a thing, right.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
This is an imaginary thing. It is to my mind,
one of the great telling points of how broken the
Republican Party is right now is that they continue to
have this bifurcated view of Joe Biden. Either he is
a drooling, senile idiot who can barely stay awake, or
he's a devious mastermind running a program throughout all the
(08:43):
American courts and legal system to destroy Donald Trump. It's
got to be one of the other. Folks. Pick a side,
pick a theme.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I'm going to ask you a question here that you're
not prepared for, and it's something I've been thinking a lot.
I think Gaza is hurting Biden.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You know, I'm going to disagree with you for two reasons.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
By the way, I've been told my Biden world that
that's not true. I've been told that people don't vote
on foreign policy. But I think that it's hurting him
with voters.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It's hurting him with young voters who are not voters.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Those are the voters that Trump is winning. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Let's put it this way. If I was to demographically
describe the average Trump voter, it's a sixty five year old,
pissed off white dude who drives a four out two fifty.
It is not a young African American looking at Donald
Trump at long last as a as a solution to
the political stasis in this country. That's not the real world.
And young voters historically aren't voters. You know, just I've
(09:41):
lived in politics too long and seen it hyped too
many times. You know, George Bush and Mike Dukakis got
a higher percentage of young voters than Barack Obama and
John McCain, and Barack Obama was supposedly the singular motivator
of young voters in American history. It just isn't real.
And those kids you're watching in the college came campuses
scream about Gaza, they're not going to vote. I know
(10:03):
people want to believe that they're all motivated in democracy.
It doesn't matter. They're not going to vote. They are
low propensity voters. They are one to two voters. And
if somebody had the secret sauce rock the vote wouldn't
still be in business thirty five years later. No one
knows how to reliably turn out young voters. They just
don't know how to do it. It's a mechanical process
(10:23):
with a hard target, and it's much easier to go
out and swap out. And even if you accept the
theory right and you say, oh, okay, we're hurting with
young voters, Okay, go turn out some more white union members,
Go turn out some more African American women in North Carolina.
Go turn out people you know how to turn out.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
See. I don't think you're right, but I'm going to
agree to disagree with you here. But I am curious.
Why do you think there is so little movement in
the Middle East? Why can't Biden and the war tomorrow?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It is a hard choice. You could say, Okay, we
don't like Babe, and nobody likes Boebe Byebe's a global pariah.
At this point, as somebody who tried to defeat BB
in twenty twenty one with a secular center right candidate,
I can tell you how hard it is. It's not
easy to get rid of the guy. But even if
you said that, you said, Okay, we're cutting off all
aid to Israel until they stop doing X. You have
(11:16):
not solved the problem. You have not solved the settler problem.
You have not solved the massive problem that Iran has
its finger in the pie here. You have not solved
any number of the other externalities that are real and
that you know. Look, if BB died tomorrow, you're not
gonna have Kumbaya in Gaza. Hamas still believes that Israelis
(11:36):
should be stacked like Cordwood and killed.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
What state do you think Democrats would be focused on
right now?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I'm a big fan of pushing Wisconsin and Michigan. Right now,
I'm feeling a little better about Pennsylvania, feeling a little
worse about Arizona, but not like dramatically, so, not like catastrophically,
so I think it's still gettable, winnable, fixable. But you know,
I would not take the bait on Minnesota that's going
to be It's not a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, that's Trump's favorite thing that they're going to put Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I'm play I know, so I'm trying to make Minnesota
a thing. Don it's not a thing?
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah yeah, But what about like Florida. If you have
a choice between Florida and North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I'd go to North Carolina. It's a cheaper state to win.
Florida is a very expensive state to try to win.
I think the numbers in North Carolina, especially with Robinson
at the top of the of the state ticket, are
really I think. I think You're going to end up
with a guy who is so weird and so cuckoo
that it gives Democrats a lift there that they did
not otherwise anticipate.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
They would have, right, explain that story a little more so.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
This is a guy who believes that women shouldn't vote.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
He's black, he was the lieutenant governor, and he's now
running for governor, and he's running against someone.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Who is pretty moderate.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, okay, so go on.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
But this is a guy who literally says things like,
you know, women are up at they and they shouldn't
be allowed to vote. I will say this, On the
one hand, it's proof, thank God that our country is
now color blind enough to accept insane people of all
races on the Republican side of the ticket. But I
know national Republicans, including the Trump campaign, are very nervous
that this guy is gonna draw down a sufficient number
(13:16):
of Republicans and leave them either on the bench like
eg not voting at all, or drive them into the
Democrat's arms. And I think if you're a person like
that in a state like North Carolina. And again the
reason I argue for North Carolina is it is about
a third man maybe forty percent of the cost of
operating in Florida. You've got five media markets versus ten.
(13:37):
You've got operational cost per week. If you're really doing
a campaign there per week in Florida, you're going to
spend five million dollars now every week. In North Carolina
you could probably do that for a million six somewhere
in that member million five And those are back of
the envelope math. But it's a legitimate question of how
you handle the money assignments in a national campaign. That's
(14:00):
where that kind of thing comes into play. Do you
go to Nevada instead of North Carolina? As of now, No,
but maybe Nevada's a really fluid state. It's a really
weird state. So there's a lot here, Molly In we
have one hundred and fifty nine days. Trump is going
to absolutely fucking immolate himself any number of times between
now and the end of the election. Sometimes it'll matter,
(14:21):
sometimes it won't. The trick is to add up all
the times it matters for voters who are still either
undecided or uncomfortable voting for Trump.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
People say voters have their minds decided. I think that's
true only of a small group. I think that the
group that has gotten so excited about Trump, from what
we've seen with the polling, that group actually is very
low information. So aren't those actually hearts and minds that
you could change.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I'm much more inclined, by both experience and inclination, to
try to go after the votes of those software Republicans,
those conservative Democrats, those independent leaning conservatives that at Lincoln
we were pretty good at talking to and we're pretty
good at focusing on, because those folks are a gettable demo.
(15:11):
They are not dug in on Trump and trump Ism
at the same level. That's where I'd go.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You are quite welcome talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store
with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
and top bags. To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com.
(15:46):
Harry Littman is a former US attorney and host of
the podcast Talking Feds. We're doing a little Fast Politics
Talking Fed mashup Harry.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Letman Moly junk Fest. What a day we chose for
our latest Molly mass out.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
How much sleep did you get last night?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It's a fair question. I'm four or five hours. Was
a late night, and I had stuff tell the early morning,
and it just kind of folded up right on a
beautiful New York day, So I could have slept in
a little more. But some kind of residual excitement or
something for the day before.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So let's talk about what happened. We are talking about
the Trump verdict, which came at four point fifteen on
a Thursday, when everyone thought that the jury was about
to be sent home. First of all, let's just quarterback
on ourselves. You and I both have been talking about
this on television, but you much more than me, because
you obviously are a lawyer and know how to do this.
(16:46):
What did you think, I mean, did you think this
was going to happen? Were you surprised? And more broadly,
I want you to sort of talk to us about
what you thought when it came in and what you
thought when you heard it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I was not surprised, it was They had told us
they were going over the day, so I would have
expected a verdict on Friday. But it is the verdict
I expected. It's the verdict that at the time or
maybe even in retrospect, seemed inexorable from the evidence. But
really props to the DA. They really took the tangled
(17:22):
story that could have been played as a hush money
case and constructed a narrative of election interference that just
had a through line from Pecker to Cohen and seemed
really cogent and featured a few witnesses that could be
assailed like so many witnesses in a criminal case in
(17:44):
New York. Not just Cohen, but you know, Pecker is
quite the character Stormy Daniels, but each of them. This
was the great thing about being in the court roomly
jurys make credibility determinations based on the overall sense, and
you know, yeah, it's a really human thing to kind
of take the measure of a witness and are they
(18:04):
telling the truth? And I think they were, and that
that came across, and so I wasn't surprised at the verdict,
including that they ran the table. I do want to
say though, at the DEA, I won't say they made
it look easy, but the preparation gap was just enormous.
Steinlass got up and he went too long shore, but
(18:26):
knew every he had practiced it from the overall contours
to the sentences and had pauses and drama and coherence,
and really the defense who I think you may know
this beread than I. There's some kind of backstory of
real bickering among them. They were just didn't have any
(18:47):
kind of narrative, and there was part based on the evidence,
and part I think they just didn't really ever bear
down on a story they could present. That's a shorthand verse.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
What I thought, as a non lawyer was the same
thing as what you just said, which is and again
I am not a lawyer. I don't even have a
college degree. I have a Master's of Fine Arts. So
few people are less confident. Not true way in the
URA system. But what I noticed, what I was surprised by,
was this was a case where a lot of us
(19:21):
in the media industrial complex had misgivings. And then when
they brought out David Pecker, I was like, Wow, this
guy really just has Trump dead to rights. And then
you had Hope Picks weeping on the stand because she
knew she had him dead to rights. And then you
had Madeline Westerhouse on the stand going like this is
(19:42):
what this is, and everyone being like wow. And then
you had Trump's lawyer attacking Storey Daniels and opening the
door for a whole thing that didn't even have anything
to do with the case. And so I was the same.
I was shocked at what a good job the prosecution did.
Nut shocked, but I was impressed. And then I was
(20:03):
really shocked at what a bad job. I mean, Trump
is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on legal fees.
And what was clear, and Todd Blanche said this on
television later, was that in fact, Trump had basically told
him everything he had to do.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Everyone noted what a big problem you had who didn't
just meander in his closing. They went after if you noticed,
their big point was these records are not false. Michael
Cohen actually performed these legal services. Are you leidding me?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
You know?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
And just so just in general, not only the lack
sort of pop and kind of overall it's less the
lawyers on a storyteller's art, but they made so many
bad choices. Let me talk to you about the verdict
from your sort of vantage point, because you know, you
wrote in your bed Trump sash money, gully vertics, someone
going to make him more dangerous that in the aftermath
(20:53):
we knew was coming, and has everything to do with
his habit of lying for his political gain. That he
was always going to Trump was always going to try
to use candidate Trump to help defending Trump. Surely true,
and any verdict was destined to be molded into his
brand and narrative of persecution which hunts in a fight
against the political system, also clearly true. But do you
(21:14):
think in other instances it's things that seemed so meaningful
and pivotal just kind of receded. Do you actually think
that he's going to leverage the verdict to fight against
the political system and he'll be railing about this in September,
when he could just hope that time would put it
(21:34):
enough in the distance that he could do. As the
rest of his playbook.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Trump World desperately wants you to believe that, right, this
is a guy and I'm going to quote Will Hurd
here he announced a week after the midterms because he
hoped that it would keep him from being indicted. So
this has always been a play about Trump not going
to jail. So what Trump desperately wants, what Trump World
(21:58):
desperately wants is for you, you and the justice system and
the three other cases which are waiting to go forward
and may never go forward because Trump has been able
to use all this donor money to punt these cases.
What Trump desperately wants is for people in the pundit
complex to say it's baked in. Voters know they don't
(22:19):
care that he's done crimes. That's what Trump wants, and
that's what Mitch McConnell wants, and that's even what Susan
Collins wants. Concerned moderate Susan Collins also wants you to
not believe that any of this matters, because nihilism helps
autocracy and Trump is an autocrat.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Nicely put, we need a button for that.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Okay, Trump is an autocrat, and all Trump wants is
for people to say doesn't matter, don't care. And the
reality is we have seen and again I fucking hate poles,
but we have seen polls that say that swing voters
in Wisconsin don't want to vote for a criminal and
they don't like this. And the look, Trump has only
(23:02):
won one election twenty sixteen. Since then, he has lost
every election. He has never tried to grow the base.
Like if you just think of this, like the idea
that Trump is constantly trying to get pundits to think
in three dimensional chests is really so fucking stupid. That's
all I could say. I was going to make a
(23:23):
larger case about how autocrats work, but the truth is
it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Okay, And how does that translate? So right, So what's
a canard? Great, give me the conviction. But so do
you think that means, in practical terms, Molly, that he
will do a pivot from this and try to ignore it,
or do you think he'll be beating his breasts about
this the whole time? That's a strategy?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, Because first of all, Remember, Trump has for this
entire time thought that being a defendant helps him, and
he's thought that. I mean, I really do think Trump.
There's so much bullshit here and so many conservatives lying
about stuff, but I actually do believe that Trump believes
be being a defendant helps him well.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And his poles went up during the trough, So you
think that's my foot ships.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
In turn, that's not true. His poles did not go
up during the trial. His polls were pretty much static.
And during the incredible primaries where Trump ran against many
versions of him who had no other leg to stand
on except he's our guy and we're not as interesting
as he is, then he did well. But that is
the Republican base, which is again a brain worms contingent
(24:28):
of the American public.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah all right, but so you're saying he wants me
to but this will actually be a feature, not something
to put to the side of the campaign. He'll beat
his breast all the way through about New York and
Biden and I'm your martyr.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Trump ran against American democracy. You'll remember, even when he
lost in twenty twenty. It's a fixed system, it's a
rigged system. He was saying that even before he won
in twenty sixteen. This guy is an autocrat. He wants
to degrade and attack American institutions, that's what. So he's
going to run against the courts. But you know, a
(25:04):
person with that much legal trouble needs to run against
the courts. And remember, for him, this all works out
great because either way he uses that campaign money for lawyers. Right,
he doesn't have to pay one hundred plus million dollars
in legal fees not coming out of the Trump family
irrevocable trusts. And I think that that is a really
(25:25):
important point.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
By the way, I wouldn't say great in the sense
that the endgame might be if he doesn't win, you know,
confinement for the rest of his natural life. But you
know it's a real risk.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
No, but it's still he was going to have that confinement.
I see their way. So running for office just gave
him free money for lawyers. And I would say that
I would be shocked if he didn't try to run
in twenty twenty eight. Wow, why wouldn't he There's no
It's like, there's no incentive not to. If you can
use this money for lawyers, why wouldn't you just keep
(25:58):
running until you die.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So we keep asking is there trump Ism after trum
but instead there's Trump after Trump? Holy cal I.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Mean I do think there's trump Ism after Trump.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
And it's named Donald Trump. Okay, what you got? Bring it?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
How are they going to keep this Joey safe?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Yeah, there's no great answer from the criminal justice system.
They are not going to go into witness protection program,
et cetera. You know, I have to think, are they
really the villains in the eyes of the maga faithful,
even the crazy maga faithful, the kind of you know,
Loan Wlos who went in and shot up the Cincinnati FBI.
(26:37):
You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I was half the
kind of subtext, wasn't it, of don't put him in jail,
that maybe they come after you. It's folly to think
that their identities won't be known by people who want
to diligently do it. So the short answer this used
to I come up. Well, you know, in terrorism age,
I was a US attorney and judges would say, what
(26:59):
happens if some crazy person wants to come and tear
us and blow us up? And the answer really was, well,
then they'll blow you up. You know, I think it
will reduce to a marginal risk. I don't see why
they would be the target, but there's no way to
forget criminal justice. The entire justice system can one percent
(27:21):
prevent and now, of course they could one hundred percent
go after it would be very serious crime. So it's
the same kind of disincentive as how do you get
keep a judge or a US attorney. You know, we
used to have Marshall protections, et cetera. But it's it's
I have no good answer for you.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
They can't send them home with security.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Sure, Oh no, no, no. When I say good answer, I
mean fool. How are they going to keep them safe?
I mean literally, if Trump world they're what they want
to do.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Is starts boxing them or something.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
That's all I'm saying. Of course, they're the equivalent of
double locks on the door and burglar alarms and buzzers
and stuff. But I think that the literal answer to
your question is they can't. They can just they can
reduce the risk, and you know, these guys could leave
New York, but no one's hopefully gonna do that. I
just think that during these few weeks, there's been a
few of our peers who have been distinguished by the
(28:14):
glowers they seem to draw personally from Trump and the
personal messages. You know, it's kind of a resume builder.
But there's been real questions among our are we in danger?
I don't put myself in that category. And the short
answer is, you know, look, if some crazy person hears
from channels with aluminum foil the voice of Donald Trump saying.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Go, got that out, we don't need to tempt fade here.
You go, Okay, ask me a question.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Go so, I'm really intrigued. You said, you fucking hate poles,
and I do too, But I also think I but
we as really don't fucking understand poles, and we're gonna
make so we're gonna learn a lot about it, just
social scientists over the next several years, but especially this
whole problem that it seems like all the action for
(29:04):
Trump is at the level of social media and things
that just don't actually register in the typical polls. But
you said, I'm talking now about your piece, really great piece,
by the way, the Vanny Fair piece. Everybody checked. It's
out the panic of the polls. But anyway, you said, look,
Nikki Hagey's zombie campaign still getting more thin ten percent
(29:25):
of the vote. Biden seems to be pulling better among
those who are likely to actually show up. But just
I want to zero in on the point that the
polling industry just doesn't seem to have the real precision
of access to, as you put a people's political persuasions
and habits that tech companies do. So, you know, are
(29:47):
these are the pollsters you think overestimating mega members commitment
actually shown up for their guy? You know? Is does
that lesson? I don't think we can calibrate it yet,
but the do you think in general it points toward
hidden good news for Biden.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, so this is what I would say, Yes, pollsters
have a big problem.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
It's actually a good question.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
You were going, yeah, no, Well.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
It's actually something I spent a lot of time thinking about.
So posters don't have a great pulse on what's happening,
but what's happening here is actually something different. So in
twenty sixteen, and again, posters will tell you they weren't wrong,
but they were wrong. They were really, really really wrong.
They were wrong. And from that they extrapolated Hillary Quinn
as a ninety nine point nine percent or an eighty
(30:34):
nine percent chance of winning.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
And then during the evening eighty seventy you watched it
like the oxygen level dropping it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, so that was a real polling error. And since
then what they've done and part of the reason that
was a polling error, not to make excuses for them,
but this is actually was not their fault. Was that
Trump voters were a group of low frequency voters who
you couldn't pull because he didn't think they existed. And
that was what Kelly and Conway said about these hidden
(31:04):
Trump voters. They were hidden because they weren't voters. They
were just people who usually didn't vote. But Trump had
this populist message which they responded to, and that happened
in twenty sixteen, and that also happened in twenty twenty.
But it doesn't happen in the midterms. Those people don't
come out for anyone else. Trump Ism does not scale.
So you know, maybe you win a primary, but like
(31:24):
a really good example is Jade Vance in Ohio, Ruby
red state running you know, trumpy Trump and trump Asaurus
running ten points behind the partisan lean because ultimately it
doesn't work for anyone else. It only works for Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, I mean in Ohio, the guy who was just
a friend of mine lost the U to the wine
had more votes than anybody who's ever had, but the
wind somehow, these hidden Trump voters came out and just
new voters put the wine over the top.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Same thing with Vans, right, but usually that doesn't happen, right,
and Vans still ran behind the partisan lane. So what
I would say is that my guess is what these
posters are doing. And Nate Cohen wrote very smartly about
this other times, they're trying to estimate whether or not
this group comes out. I think they will come out.
(32:16):
But the question is because you know, remember a million
Americans died of COVID, and even if I know, that
was three years ago, so no one remembers, but that
was a million people, and so maybe a lot of
those people were older. It doesn't matter. If your grandmother
refuse to get vaccinated and then died of COVID, do
(32:37):
her five grandchildren run out and vote for Trump. It's
an open question. Maybe they think COVID is a you know,
racist can I mean, maybe they have some racist way
to make it work for them, but you could see
that that could actually theoretically hurt him. But the other
thing that I think is really still possible. It's just
(32:57):
really hard to square what the unpredictable voters will do.
And if you look at the bottom of the ticket,
which I think is really where the action is happening,
these Democratic senators are running way ahead, like I saw
Tammy Baldwin running twelve points ahead and swing state Wisconsin,
(33:18):
so I think there's some sorcery going on and trying
to measure these Trump voters. I have a lot of
trouble imagining a voter coming out voting for Tammy Baldwin
and then voting for Trump. Not impossible, but feels like
a stretch.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, you know, Mollie, like well as always, I think
we cover from the what you cover, from the sort
of daily to the more profound national trends and really
that you know, the things that are growth. Sorcery is
is such a perfect word for what seems to be
going on. You know, presumably the magic will reveal itself
(33:54):
not to be magic, but right now I'm not sure
how and why. So that'll keep me biting my name
else for the next six months.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
And you and I both agree that we don't know
what we don't know, and we'll know a lot more in.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
November, there's an end. Look forward to the next Molly mashup.
Thanks a lot and a big week.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Ben Smith is the
editor of Semaphore. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ben.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Smith, thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
You're here ostensibly to promote a podcast, but I'm going
to ask you lots of out the questions, but first
you can tell us about the podcast. It's a media podcast.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, the people seem to care a lot about media.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
The last gasps of a dying industry. I it's like
a snuff film.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Oh god right, Molly, No, it's I like, I kind
of hate that whole like colagulating journalism thing. No, I mean,
I think the thing about media is that it is
both grim and boring if you think of it as
a sort of small, dying industry. But it's in a
huge story if you think about it, as it cuts
into politics, into culture, into technology, and it lends on
(35:03):
all of those stories. And so we're launching a show
called Mixed Signals. Naima Raza and I will be co
hosting it some help from Max Tani, Samaphore's great media editor,
to sort of tell those stories about what is happening
behind the scenes, as it affects things that actually matter,
as it affects national politics, as it affects Hollywood and
the culture and things we really care about. And I
(35:24):
think that's you know that to me, that's really one
of one of the biggest stories of this media age,
and so we're excited about it. And I think there
is this sort of lingering sense that I think everybody
has that there's some kind of conspiracy that media is
a bit of a conspiracy, that people are making decisions
that are in some sense manipulative, or that something's happening
behind the scenes. I think what's so interesting about covering
it is that in some ways media is a conspiracy,
(35:45):
but often it's particularly a conspiracy to make money and
not a very good one, and actually understanding how decisions
are being made is often very interesting and often very
different from what you would think from the outside.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I listened to on the Media that podcast from w
Andy See, which is really really smart. They had a
podcast yesterday, but I think it was like two weeks
ago or whatever, because you know, the timing of when
these drop is not, you know, it doesn't totally line
up and they talked about how much a lot of
tech journalism has been really celebrating advancement without providing a
(36:21):
lot of pushback, and then most AI coverage seems to
do a similar like AA is going to change our lives.
AI is fire and not been critical enough. That strikes
me as like maybe a larger problem too when it
comes to coverage.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
That strikes me as a pretty broad generalization and maybe
a story that was true fifteen years ago. I mean,
the sort of interesting story about tech coverage, I think
is how hard it turned against the technology industry kind
of during the social media era and during the Trump era,
and kind of how hostile the industry has become to
the people who cover it. I mean, I agree with you,
there is a certain amount of and honestly a certain
amount of justified like, hey, this shure is coverage of AI,
(37:01):
because you know, at the core of a lot of
technology coverage is and ought to be an excitement about technology,
and a lot of tech reporters have that. But I
actually find that we have sometimes imported the criticisms of
social media into coverage of AI in a way that
doesn't make all that much sense, Like they're just very
different the threats posed b AI are quite different.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
So i'd actually I think I don't buy that.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
In fact, it's like one of the great things is
that you can just have an avatar go on podcasts
so you don't have to. I'm really a big fan
of AI, and particularly for that use case.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I think you're kidding, but I can't.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Tell I'm kidding. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Sorry, Okay, how do you think that's unfair? A pushback
on something that none of us really know what it's
going to do. I mean, I'm just curious, Like I
love when people come on my podcast and I'm happy
to have you and not your AI version.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Yeah, that's the thing. Podcasting is the last use case
for humans.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Actually, again, like that would make AI kind of bad.
I mean maybe I am just not as smart as
you are, but I just assume that being replaced. I mean,
we're seeing these summations now of pieces written. You know,
now there are summaries of pieces. I mean, doesn't that
strike you as like the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
You do, know?
Speaker 5 (38:14):
I mean I think I guess from my perspective when
it comes to journalism, particularly like again, I think there
are lots of really scary things. I think some of
the kind of really growth tesque sexual harassment and defix
that AI can do are just incredibly disturbing. The sort
of you know, I think there's a sort of general
undermining people's broad shared idea of truth that is incredibly disturbing.
I think there are there are really negative things. But
(38:34):
also when it comes to journalism in particular, journalists you know,
have been complaining about the birth the growth of new
technology since you know, probably the printing press. But the
main thing I use AFI for every day is transcribing interviews.
I suspect you guys too, Like my least favorite part
of journalism was doing an interview for an hour and
that's spent two hours typing it up. I don't think
anybody feels that that is a great loss to the
(38:55):
profession that you're not doing that. I suspect there's editing
of this show that gets you.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
And actually like the way in which AI is actually.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
Manifesting itself in newsrooms, I mean sort of more sophisticated
spell checking. Like I don't think anybody thinks Grammarly is
going to be on the street corners murdering people. But
you probably did reduce the number of copy editors in
the business.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
Right right now, the.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Way these tools are being used in newsrooms is really
helpful and allows us to do more of the kind
of stuff we want to do, which is trying to
figure out what's really happening, talking to other human beings
and leaving the boring stuff to the AI. And I
guess I don't really think that either your job of
helping people figure out the world and explaining it to
them in a nuanced and human way, or my job
(39:35):
of trying to get people to tell me information are
really at risk. And maybe that's sort of self centered,
but that is how I see it.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
No I agree, and Jase uses in AI software to
edit this and to get rid of noise, and I
certainly agree. As a dyslexic who is violently very dyslexic,
the improvement in spellcheck has been humongous for me, so
I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
So you also welcome our new overlords.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Basically, my question is more like, should we be pushing
back more all the time? For example, I had on
this podcast Jim Hines, who I really like and who
is a Democrat and who is very smart, and who
comes from Connecticut and lives in coscop And I said
to him, you know, you guys don't regulate anything, right,
(40:24):
you didn't regulate any technology. And you know when you
say that to a member of Congress, they always say, well,
the First Amendment. And I'd say, the First Amendment doesn't
have anything to do with regulating technology.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
You say, what about the Second Amendment?
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Right?
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Right? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (40:37):
No.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
But I mean the reality is Congress gave up on
trying to regulate technology. And they did that because they
were like low key, they didn't want to. It was
too many problems. If you look at Europe, like there's
actual fullsome regulations, they haven't stopped some of the problems.
And look, Europe is a much different regulatory environment. But
like to a certain extent, Congress has fallen as sleep
(41:00):
on the switch in certain ways.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
It's a strange story.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Imagine a world where technology started. You know, we went
onto the internet, we lost newspapers, and Congress said, okay,
two percent of all pre tax earning or even post
tax earning that tech companies make must be put in
nonprofit funds for local news like something, you know, one percent,
(41:26):
zero point five percent of the five hundred billion dollars
that Elon Musk made. I mean, because remember Elon Musk
made all of this money on these sort of regulatory
tax bonuses for doing environmental stuff right like he has.
He is like a guy who got government handouts. But
the government handouts went to oil companies and went to
(41:49):
people like Elon and didn't go to people like the
main daily reporter. I'm just saying, like Congress had an
opportunity to not crush the news industry, right, and they
didn't take it.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
I hate to say this as a journalist, but I'm
not sure this is totally about us in the news industry.
And to me, the core deal, which is a pretty
weird deal, is that we both got all of the companies,
all of the jobs, all of the growth, and all
of the wealth created, and we got to be the
like laboratory where all the damage got done. And then
the Europeans came in got, by the way, none of
(42:22):
the wealth, none of the great job growth, none of
the companies. But also they get to write they regulate
us and themselves, and that is essentially the unspoken deal
is that we get we get the business and the
companies and the damage and they get neither, I think,
and I do think that's fundamentally the deal that Congress
made with not regulating these companies. It has costs and benefits,
and I think they're both pretty substantial.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
So let's talk about the election coverage right now. You know,
we're a country of three hundred million plus, right, three
hundred and fifty million, three hundred and thirty million. It's
a lot of people, like maybe at most twenty million
people read in newspapers, magazines, maybe a little more than
watch cable news, you know, maybe a little more than
that watch network news. So do you think we have
(43:05):
any influence on them anymore?
Speaker 5 (43:07):
It's such a strange question this election. It's interesting because
I'm also obsessed with this and for this first episode
of Mixed Signals, I just just this morning went down
to the courthouse just a couple of blocks from here,
where there's a massive, you know, classic trial of the
century media circus with you know, dozens and dozens of
cameras and dozens of fifteen satellite trucks. And we went
and I went and found our old friend Maggie Haberman,
who's standing online, you know, at seven in the morning,
(43:30):
task through that like you know, is anybody learning anything
you go into this court and you cover this trial,
and then and then what right is there anything new?
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Is it change? Is anybody's mind being changed? On our
own mind being changed?
Speaker 5 (43:40):
Or does everybody in America basically feel one way or
the other that you get who these people are, you
get who Donald Trump is, and so you're not paying
that much attention to this incredible, historic, dramatic spectacles. Very
I agree, it's an utterly strange situation.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
So how do you think these people are getting their news?
Which people it's three hundred and forty five million people
on the storytry who don't read the New York Times.
How do you think they're getting their news?
Speaker 5 (44:04):
That is a harder question to answer than it has
been since the nineteenth century because they're basically from the
kind of proliferation of newspapers, penny dailies and things in
the second half of the nineteenth century through not that long ago.
The big story was consolidation, was more and more people
getting their information from fewer and fewer places. You know,
big national television networks replacing local ones, big national newspapers
(44:28):
displacing local ones, and then big social media companies and
big centralized platforms replacing everything. And then the story of
the last few years has been this crazy fragmentation and
people moving out to.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Smaller and smaller places.
Speaker 5 (44:40):
I mean audio is actually the most interesting example of that,
where tens of thousands of people listened to an array
of shows where they're each you know, finding people who
they really find valuable and helpful, but there's no dominant player.
In fact, there was a Pew study that said they
asked people, who's your favorite podcast? Among people who have
a favorite podcast, what's your favorite podcast?
Speaker 4 (45:00):
Pictively? The answer was Joe Rogan.
Speaker 5 (45:01):
But the most interesting thing about that was it was
Joe Rogan at five percent. So you got a market
where the number one player is five percent and everything
else is smaller. And that's just a situation which you
get on the subway and you have no idea what
the person sitting across from you has in their ears,
whereas five years ago you get in the subway and like,
it's Facebook, right, and so they're ten years ago. And
so there has I think been this big shift that
(45:22):
makes the landscape way harder to understand because you just
it's it's splintered.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
So how do you think people get their news. I mean,
Joe Rogan is millions of people, right, just.
Speaker 5 (45:31):
So like Fox News and the big broadcast networks you know,
will reach between maybe three and ten million a night,
and that's that's something Rogan, you know, maybe a vaguely
similar number. Lots of people a bit fewer than that.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
So say, Joe Rogan is twenty, Fox is four.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
Right, But these listens, I'm just listens, Like what gets
counted as a view on YouTube is much much smaller.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Okay, Howard Stern is eighteen.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Those are much smaller numbers than what gets counted as
a view on television. So there's it's hard these numbers
don't really make sense to either. But nobody is anywhere
close to the scale of what CBS News had twenty
years ago. Everything is smaller.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Right, So there definitely are millions of people on TikTok.
Speaker 5 (46:11):
Enormous numbers of people on TikTok, but again being kind
of micro targeted with the thing that they're looking for
and having the news reflected to them as what TikTok
is great at telling them exactly what they want.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
By the Chinese government.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yes, by our friends that by dents, yes.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Which is owned by the Chinese government.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
No, mostly it is just holding a mirror up to
you and telling you exactly and giving you exactly what
you want.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
That's what that machine does.
Speaker 5 (46:35):
Maybe it hasn't been proven the Chinese government puts its
thumb on the scale would not particularly surprise me. But
if young people are being told that the Palestinian side
is correct, it's mostly because that's what they want to hear.
And I don't really think the idea that tip people
are being brainwashed on there. We're all kind of the
beauty of social media as we get to wash our
own brands.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
I don't think anyone thinks that people are being brainwashed.
I mean, I don't know. Maybe there are people who
think that, but I mean, with all of this, it's
not just TikTok, it's also Instagram and Facebook. I mean,
there are opportunities for transparency with the algorithm that we
have not been given. Right.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
No thinks have been getting less transparent for as long
as I've covered these companies. In twenty twelve, there was
a site called your open Book where you could search
Facebook and see what people were talking about on there.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
And Facebook cut that.
Speaker 5 (47:19):
Off from the API and progressively, all of these companies
have released less and less and less data because they
don't like the media coverage of what is actually happening
on them.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Right, we have so many people in this country, So
say there are three hundred million people who are just
not interacting with traditional news at all. I mean at
least one hundred and fifty million of those people will vote.
Speaker 5 (47:42):
Yeah, but the biggest sources of sort of non big
mainstream media are the local television news, local radio. I mean,
voters are disproportionately older and being reached by these older forms.
So like, among the biggest of these small and medium
sized things are still, you know, along with deranged streams
on rumble or YouTube, are a lot of fairly normy stuff.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
You know, a lot of targeting stuff.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
Moms on Instagram, a lot of it's just you know,
it's splintering without I think the social media age really
elevated hyperpartisan voices, and that was what worked for the
sort of engagement metrics of Facebook. I think that's less
true enough. I think it's just a legitimate sprit splintering
that's spreading further probably further right, further left, but also
all along the middle of that spectrum in a way
(48:27):
that if you're writing about it, you are sort of
operating in the dark in a way that is disorienting
for me a list.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Do you feel that the traditional media though we have
become such an incredibly small piece of the pie, right
and we have such a small reach.
Speaker 5 (48:42):
It's funny that we're saying we you a podcaster, me
running a new website.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Well, I am an editor of Fanny Fair. I'm a
true official correspondent at a Condie Nast magazine.
Speaker 4 (48:52):
You got to foot in both worlds.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
My podcast is from a podcast company called iHeartRadio, So
I mean, I don't think that's true. Is not that?
And you worked at the New York Times for many
years and have a media startup called Temophore. So if
we're not the mainstream media, I don't know who is, man.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
I think it's the New York Times.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
Molick, No, But I'm just saying I think there's a
there's sort of a wide spectrum and a lot of
and even the question of what is mainstream is is
kind of disputed. Like you know, the like iHeart is
a great example, Like that's a company that does a
bunch of great podcasts that built around the House Stuff
Works podcast. That's sort of what built that company at first,
and where the sort of people running it come from,
which I think I don't really think of a mainstream
(49:33):
or political right. That's just sort of a great popular
show that I hope is running promos for this podcast
on its big network, and I think the lines have
really blurred, actually quite a bit between what's what's considered
traditional media and what's new media, making all of this
more confusing.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
Thank you, Ben Smith, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
No moment Jesse Cannon by John Fast the reaction to
the trumpert you predicted it hot. I mean, you don't
have to be a psychic to know exactly how this
is going to go. Donald Trump will degrade the rule
of law, rail against the judiciary, say the judge was corrupt,
(50:15):
and in fact he did all of the things we
thought he would because Donald Trump has about four plays
and he always does pretty much the same thing, no
matter what the situation is. And that, my friends, is
our moment of Fuckeray. That's it for this episode of
(50:35):
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to
hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all
this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And
again thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump says he never said
locker up about Hillary Clinton. He did, in fact, stay
locker up about Hillary Clinton. We have such a great
show for you today talking Feds. Harry Littman is here
(00:21):
to talk Donald Trump convictions. Then we'll talk to Semaphores
Ben Smith about the media's coverage of the election. But
first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Ollie John Fast, and what a beautiful thing it is
to talk to you once again, as I do every day.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Ah, it is yet another day of justice. Alito telling
Democrats to go fuck themselves discuss.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I do believe that we have a system where the
three branches of are separate, our tripartite system, to use
a good three dollar word. But I also believe that
doesn't mean that he's not being a dick, and that
there's not a honestly incredibly troubling and dark underpinning to
this which he's basically saying to America, fuck you. I'm
(01:18):
gonna do what I can to help my boy Donald.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So let's talk about the second, because there's an oversight
question here, right. There are members in the Senate who
have oversight over.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
This, yeah, over the courts.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Right, Maybe not quite the way they would like, but
they certainly do. Let's pretend for a minute that they
was reversed and it was a Democrat.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Let's do Katanji Brown Jackson puts up a Black Lives
Matter flag? What do you think would happen with Fox?
What do you think would happened with the MAGA universe?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And say Republicans controlled the judiciary? H what do you
think would happen?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Take those hypotheticals for a moment, and I will describe
it to you in the technical term of public affairs
and politics, of a screaming, gigantic shit show of the
highest possible order. There would be nothing but chaos. And
oh my god, the American Republic is dying. How dare
she engage in this outrageous, unbelievably undignified behavior that is
(02:20):
reducing America's dignity in the courts? And I could almost
write the story for you of just how crappy they
would be about it. And you know what, it's not
like we don't know what they're going to say. They
are nothing if not utterly predictable.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, so Alito said he's not going to recuse. Robert said,
go fuck yourself. What do you think Dick Durbin should do? Now?
What would you do if you were Dick Durbin's chief
of staff?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Dick Durbin, He's in the horns of a slight dilemma.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yes, save American democracy or be a good guy.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, that's exactly it. It's like, is anybody still pretending that
American institutions are robust and the guardrails are fully intact?
Because if you are, I have a bridge to sell
you or several, because that is no longer a viable
position to have in the world today. No one for
a moment should think that we live in a world
(03:12):
where the institutions will hold, where the rules will be sustained,
where nothing could go wrong, because America is just too strong. Look,
and I've been calling the Supreme Court the red Court
for a while now. First, with this whole thing about
giving Trump all the time he needed to delay the
Jack Smith case on the immunity question, and the rest
of their actions as an overtly political branch of the
(03:33):
MAGA movement have sort of added up. I think it's
hard for Americans to kind of admit it to themselves.
There are even conservatives who are like, yeah, you know
what if the Democrats did this. There is a little
bit of hesitation on this, not a lot, but there's
a little bit of like a sense of like, is
this really how we're going to end this thing? Because
right now it's kind of how we're going to end
this thing.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Honestly, American democracy.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, it feels like we're not in a great spot
as a country. You know. Everybody keeps asking me today,
like tell me something cheerful, give me some good news.
I'm like, I'm a barrel of freaking laughs.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, but let's pause for a second because
I want to talk about this. There are a lot
of people who want everyone who listens to this podcast
to despair and to not bother and to tell you
that Trump has it, But in fact, Trump doesn't have it.
And I'm going to point to a political twenty twenty
(04:25):
four Dave Wasserman tweet twenty twenty four is a tale
of two electorates, and again this is something I've written
about ad nauseum. Same Biden leads forty nine forty five
among the most reliable voters, betrayals Trump forty one fifty
one among low mid engagement voters. So the point is
(04:47):
low mid engagement voters are likelier than high engagement peers.
They may not turn out. And if you look at
the bottom of the ticket, Democrats are brushing the Republican
in those Senate seeds and the House seats.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh listen, I will give people some good news. The
Senate races look increasingly optimistic. I think initially it felt
a little bit like Arizona might be a tie ballgame.
But now Ruben is starting to open up real numbers.
I think there are a number of arguments to be
made that the House number could end up being much
larger than we even think right now. And I think
(05:24):
that there's a weird reverse coattail effect here that we
need to consider. It may end up in some of
these states that the Democratic candidates North Carolina being one
of them, end up pulling Joe Biden over the line,
and it's normally the other way around. But I'll take it.
I will happily take it. At this point.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So reverse cotails is an idea that I first heard
from Amanda Lippman, who does Run for Something and if
you are despairing, Run for Something is an awesome organization
that helps candidates everyone from the dog walkers to the
state legislators to the House of Delegates.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
They're concouraging up and down the ballot.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And her theory of the case was that young local
voters would energize the electorate in a way that an
eighty one year old incumbent might not look.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I think there are going to be a lot of
voters out there this year that take a long damn
time to get home to the reality that this really
is not Donald Trump versus Gavin Newsom, or Donald Trump
versus Gretch Whitmer or somebody else. They're going to realize finally,
it's just Donald Trump. If you're going to vote for
Donald Trump as an eighteen to thirty year old, I
(06:34):
am not buying it. I'll be perfectly can that I'm
not buying that argument at this point. I think that
we are going to see people come home it. Maybe later,
but you know, I mean obviously, and as I always
tell people, there's no excuse for not every day, getting
up to beat the bad guys in the face. But
this is not a Donald Trump from twenty sixteen. This
is not a Donald Trump from twenty twenty. This is
(06:56):
a diminished and weird and less mentally capable and frankly,
I think I have no evidence of this, but I
feel this sense with Trump that there's a physical diminishment,
that there may be something wrong with Trump more than
we know, is what I'm trying to say. It feels
like he's.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Sick, right, I mean, people have been saying that for
like a million years.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It feels increasingly like this is a guy who's like
faking it to get through the.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Day, a man who knows. But I mean, I don't
want to speculate about his medical health. Only Republicans do
that about Biden. By the way, one of the things
I love so State of the Union, so Trump always
says Biden is dementias, dementia, he's sww, senile, he's diminished.
He gives all these speeches, but nobody watches them because
(07:42):
nobody gets verified news. The only clips that ever make
it onto social are you know, crazy lists that right,
or that are selectively edited. But I'll be curious after
this debate when Biden does really well, because though he
is not a gifted orator, he is not a complete lunatic,
so he will kill I think he'll do really well
(08:04):
in these debates, and Trump will say insane things, and
I think what will happen then is Trump World will
again say that he's on drugs, which, by the way,
if there was a drug that made demented people not demented,
I would give it to my mom. Like, this is
not a thing, right.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
This is an imaginary thing. It is to my mind,
one of the great telling points of how broken the
Republican Party is right now is that they continue to
have this bifurcated view of Joe Biden. Either he is
a drooling, senile idiot who can barely stay awake, or
he's a devious mastermind running a program throughout all the
(08:43):
American courts and legal system to destroy Donald Trump. It's
got to be one of the other. Folks. Pick a side,
pick a theme.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I'm going to ask you a question here that you're
not prepared for, and it's something I've been thinking a lot.
I think Gaza is hurting Biden.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You know, I'm going to disagree with you for two reasons.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
By the way, I've been told my Biden world that
that's not true. I've been told that people don't vote
on foreign policy. But I think that it's hurting him
with voters.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It's hurting him with young voters who are not voters.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Those are the voters that Trump is winning. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Let's put it this way. If I was to demographically
describe the average Trump voter, it's a sixty five year old,
pissed off white dude who drives a four out two fifty.
It is not a young African American looking at Donald
Trump at long last as a as a solution to
the political stasis in this country. That's not the real world.
And young voters historically aren't voters. You know, just I've
(09:41):
lived in politics too long and seen it hyped too
many times. You know, George Bush and Mike Dukakis got
a higher percentage of young voters than Barack Obama and
John McCain, and Barack Obama was supposedly the singular motivator
of young voters in American history. It just isn't real.
And those kids you're watching in the college came campuses
scream about Gaza, they're not going to vote. I know
(10:03):
people want to believe that they're all motivated in democracy.
It doesn't matter. They're not going to vote. They are
low propensity voters. They are one to two voters. And
if somebody had the secret sauce rock the vote wouldn't
still be in business thirty five years later. No one
knows how to reliably turn out young voters. They just
don't know how to do it. It's a mechanical process
(10:23):
with a hard target, and it's much easier to go
out and swap out. And even if you accept the
theory right and you say, oh, okay, we're hurting with
young voters, Okay, go turn out some more white union members,
Go turn out some more African American women in North Carolina.
Go turn out people you know how to turn out.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
See. I don't think you're right, but I'm going to
agree to disagree with you here. But I am curious.
Why do you think there is so little movement in
the Middle East? Why can't Biden and the war tomorrow?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It is a hard choice. You could say, Okay, we
don't like Babe, and nobody likes Boebe Byebe's a global pariah.
At this point, as somebody who tried to defeat BB
in twenty twenty one with a secular center right candidate,
I can tell you how hard it is. It's not
easy to get rid of the guy. But even if
you said that, you said, Okay, we're cutting off all
aid to Israel until they stop doing X. You have
(11:16):
not solved the problem. You have not solved the settler problem.
You have not solved the massive problem that Iran has
its finger in the pie here. You have not solved
any number of the other externalities that are real and
that you know. Look, if BB died tomorrow, you're not
gonna have Kumbaya in Gaza. Hamas still believes that Israelis
(11:36):
should be stacked like Cordwood and killed.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
What state do you think Democrats would be focused on
right now?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I'm a big fan of pushing Wisconsin and Michigan. Right now,
I'm feeling a little better about Pennsylvania, feeling a little
worse about Arizona, but not like dramatically, so, not like catastrophically,
so I think it's still gettable, winnable, fixable. But you know,
I would not take the bait on Minnesota that's going
to be It's not a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, that's Trump's favorite thing that they're going to put Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I'm play I know, so I'm trying to make Minnesota
a thing. Don it's not a thing?
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah yeah, But what about like Florida. If you have
a choice between Florida and North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I'd go to North Carolina. It's a cheaper state to win.
Florida is a very expensive state to try to win.
I think the numbers in North Carolina, especially with Robinson
at the top of the of the state ticket, are
really I think. I think You're going to end up
with a guy who is so weird and so cuckoo
that it gives Democrats a lift there that they did
not otherwise anticipate.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
They would have, right, explain that story a little more so.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
This is a guy who believes that women shouldn't vote.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
He's black, he was the lieutenant governor, and he's now
running for governor, and he's running against someone.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Who is pretty moderate.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, okay, so go on.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
But this is a guy who literally says things like,
you know, women are up at they and they shouldn't
be allowed to vote. I will say this, On the
one hand, it's proof, thank God that our country is
now color blind enough to accept insane people of all
races on the Republican side of the ticket. But I
know national Republicans, including the Trump campaign, are very nervous
that this guy is gonna draw down a sufficient number
(13:16):
of Republicans and leave them either on the bench like
eg not voting at all, or drive them into the
Democrat's arms. And I think if you're a person like
that in a state like North Carolina. And again the
reason I argue for North Carolina is it is about
a third man maybe forty percent of the cost of
operating in Florida. You've got five media markets versus ten.
(13:37):
You've got operational cost per week. If you're really doing
a campaign there per week in Florida, you're going to
spend five million dollars now every week. In North Carolina
you could probably do that for a million six somewhere
in that member million five And those are back of
the envelope math. But it's a legitimate question of how
you handle the money assignments in a national campaign. That's
(14:00):
where that kind of thing comes into play. Do you
go to Nevada instead of North Carolina? As of now, No,
but maybe Nevada's a really fluid state. It's a really
weird state. So there's a lot here, Molly In we
have one hundred and fifty nine days. Trump is going
to absolutely fucking immolate himself any number of times between
now and the end of the election. Sometimes it'll matter,
(14:21):
sometimes it won't. The trick is to add up all
the times it matters for voters who are still either
undecided or uncomfortable voting for Trump.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
People say voters have their minds decided. I think that's
true only of a small group. I think that the
group that has gotten so excited about Trump, from what
we've seen with the polling, that group actually is very
low information. So aren't those actually hearts and minds that
you could change.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I'm much more inclined, by both experience and inclination, to
try to go after the votes of those software Republicans,
those conservative Democrats, those independent leaning conservatives that at Lincoln
we were pretty good at talking to and we're pretty
good at focusing on, because those folks are a gettable demo.
(15:11):
They are not dug in on Trump and trump Ism
at the same level. That's where I'd go.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You are quite welcome talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store
with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
and top bags. To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com.
(15:46):
Harry Littman is a former US attorney and host of
the podcast Talking Feds. We're doing a little Fast Politics
Talking Fed mashup Harry.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Letman Moly junk Fest. What a day we chose for
our latest Molly mass out.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
How much sleep did you get last night?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It's a fair question. I'm four or five hours. Was
a late night, and I had stuff tell the early morning,
and it just kind of folded up right on a
beautiful New York day, So I could have slept in
a little more. But some kind of residual excitement or
something for the day before.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So let's talk about what happened. We are talking about
the Trump verdict, which came at four point fifteen on
a Thursday, when everyone thought that the jury was about
to be sent home. First of all, let's just quarterback
on ourselves. You and I both have been talking about
this on television, but you much more than me, because
you obviously are a lawyer and know how to do this.
(16:46):
What did you think, I mean, did you think this
was going to happen? Were you surprised? And more broadly,
I want you to sort of talk to us about
what you thought when it came in and what you
thought when you heard it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I was not surprised, it was They had told us
they were going over the day, so I would have
expected a verdict on Friday. But it is the verdict
I expected. It's the verdict that at the time or
maybe even in retrospect, seemed inexorable from the evidence. But
really props to the DA. They really took the tangled
(17:22):
story that could have been played as a hush money
case and constructed a narrative of election interference that just
had a through line from Pecker to Cohen and seemed
really cogent and featured a few witnesses that could be
assailed like so many witnesses in a criminal case in
(17:44):
New York. Not just Cohen, but you know, Pecker is
quite the character Stormy Daniels, but each of them. This
was the great thing about being in the court roomly
jurys make credibility determinations based on the overall sense, and
you know, yeah, it's a really human thing to kind
of take the measure of a witness and are they
(18:04):
telling the truth? And I think they were, and that
that came across, and so I wasn't surprised at the verdict,
including that they ran the table. I do want to
say though, at the DEA, I won't say they made
it look easy, but the preparation gap was just enormous.
Steinlass got up and he went too long shore, but
(18:26):
knew every he had practiced it from the overall contours
to the sentences and had pauses and drama and coherence,
and really the defense who I think you may know
this beread than I. There's some kind of backstory of
real bickering among them. They were just didn't have any
(18:47):
kind of narrative, and there was part based on the evidence,
and part I think they just didn't really ever bear
down on a story they could present. That's a shorthand verse.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
What I thought, as a non lawyer was the same
thing as what you just said, which is and again
I am not a lawyer. I don't even have a
college degree. I have a Master's of Fine Arts. So
few people are less confident. Not true way in the
URA system. But what I noticed, what I was surprised by,
was this was a case where a lot of us
(19:21):
in the media industrial complex had misgivings. And then when
they brought out David Pecker, I was like, Wow, this
guy really just has Trump dead to rights. And then
you had Hope Picks weeping on the stand because she
knew she had him dead to rights. And then you
had Madeline Westerhouse on the stand going like this is
(19:42):
what this is, and everyone being like wow. And then
you had Trump's lawyer attacking Storey Daniels and opening the
door for a whole thing that didn't even have anything
to do with the case. And so I was the same.
I was shocked at what a good job the prosecution did.
Nut shocked, but I was impressed. And then I was
(20:03):
really shocked at what a bad job. I mean, Trump
is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on legal fees.
And what was clear, and Todd Blanche said this on
television later, was that in fact, Trump had basically told
him everything he had to do.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Everyone noted what a big problem you had who didn't
just meander in his closing. They went after if you noticed,
their big point was these records are not false. Michael
Cohen actually performed these legal services. Are you leidding me?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
You know?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
And just so just in general, not only the lack
sort of pop and kind of overall it's less the
lawyers on a storyteller's art, but they made so many
bad choices. Let me talk to you about the verdict
from your sort of vantage point, because you know, you
wrote in your bed Trump sash money, gully vertics, someone
going to make him more dangerous that in the aftermath
(20:53):
we knew was coming, and has everything to do with
his habit of lying for his political gain. That he
was always going to Trump was always going to try
to use candidate Trump to help defending Trump. Surely true,
and any verdict was destined to be molded into his
brand and narrative of persecution which hunts in a fight
against the political system, also clearly true. But do you
(21:14):
think in other instances it's things that seemed so meaningful
and pivotal just kind of receded. Do you actually think
that he's going to leverage the verdict to fight against
the political system and he'll be railing about this in September,
when he could just hope that time would put it
(21:34):
enough in the distance that he could do. As the
rest of his playbook.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Trump World desperately wants you to believe that, right, this
is a guy and I'm going to quote Will Hurd
here he announced a week after the midterms because he
hoped that it would keep him from being indicted. So
this has always been a play about Trump not going
to jail. So what Trump desperately wants, what Trump World
(21:58):
desperately wants is for you, you and the justice system and
the three other cases which are waiting to go forward
and may never go forward because Trump has been able
to use all this donor money to punt these cases.
What Trump desperately wants is for people in the pundit
complex to say it's baked in. Voters know they don't
(22:19):
care that he's done crimes. That's what Trump wants, and
that's what Mitch McConnell wants, and that's even what Susan
Collins wants. Concerned moderate Susan Collins also wants you to
not believe that any of this matters, because nihilism helps
autocracy and Trump is an autocrat.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Nicely put, we need a button for that.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Okay, Trump is an autocrat, and all Trump wants is
for people to say doesn't matter, don't care. And the
reality is we have seen and again I fucking hate poles,
but we have seen polls that say that swing voters
in Wisconsin don't want to vote for a criminal and
they don't like this. And the look, Trump has only
(23:02):
won one election twenty sixteen. Since then, he has lost
every election. He has never tried to grow the base.
Like if you just think of this, like the idea
that Trump is constantly trying to get pundits to think
in three dimensional chests is really so fucking stupid. That's
all I could say. I was going to make a
(23:23):
larger case about how autocrats work, but the truth is
it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Okay, And how does that translate? So right, So what's
a canard? Great, give me the conviction. But so do
you think that means, in practical terms, Molly, that he
will do a pivot from this and try to ignore it,
or do you think he'll be beating his breasts about
this the whole time? That's a strategy?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, Because first of all, Remember, Trump has for this
entire time thought that being a defendant helps him, and
he's thought that. I mean, I really do think Trump.
There's so much bullshit here and so many conservatives lying
about stuff, but I actually do believe that Trump believes
be being a defendant helps him well.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And his poles went up during the trough, So you
think that's my foot ships.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
In turn, that's not true. His poles did not go
up during the trial. His polls were pretty much static.
And during the incredible primaries where Trump ran against many
versions of him who had no other leg to stand
on except he's our guy and we're not as interesting
as he is, then he did well. But that is
the Republican base, which is again a brain worms contingent
(24:28):
of the American public.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah all right, but so you're saying he wants me
to but this will actually be a feature, not something
to put to the side of the campaign. He'll beat
his breast all the way through about New York and
Biden and I'm your martyr.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Trump ran against American democracy. You'll remember, even when he
lost in twenty twenty. It's a fixed system, it's a
rigged system. He was saying that even before he won
in twenty sixteen. This guy is an autocrat. He wants
to degrade and attack American institutions, that's what. So he's
going to run against the courts. But you know, a
(25:04):
person with that much legal trouble needs to run against
the courts. And remember, for him, this all works out
great because either way he uses that campaign money for lawyers. Right,
he doesn't have to pay one hundred plus million dollars
in legal fees not coming out of the Trump family
irrevocable trusts. And I think that that is a really
(25:25):
important point.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
By the way, I wouldn't say great in the sense
that the endgame might be if he doesn't win, you know,
confinement for the rest of his natural life. But you
know it's a real risk.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
No, but it's still he was going to have that confinement.
I see their way. So running for office just gave
him free money for lawyers. And I would say that
I would be shocked if he didn't try to run
in twenty twenty eight. Wow, why wouldn't he There's no
It's like, there's no incentive not to. If you can
use this money for lawyers, why wouldn't you just keep
(25:58):
running until you die.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So we keep asking is there trump Ism after trum
but instead there's Trump after Trump? Holy cal I.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Mean I do think there's trump Ism after Trump.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
And it's named Donald Trump. Okay, what you got? Bring it?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
How are they going to keep this Joey safe?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Yeah, there's no great answer from the criminal justice system.
They are not going to go into witness protection program,
et cetera. You know, I have to think, are they
really the villains in the eyes of the maga faithful,
even the crazy maga faithful, the kind of you know,
Loan Wlos who went in and shot up the Cincinnati FBI.
(26:37):
You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I was half the
kind of subtext, wasn't it, of don't put him in jail,
that maybe they come after you. It's folly to think
that their identities won't be known by people who want
to diligently do it. So the short answer this used
to I come up. Well, you know, in terrorism age,
I was a US attorney and judges would say, what
(26:59):
happens if some crazy person wants to come and tear
us and blow us up? And the answer really was, well,
then they'll blow you up. You know, I think it
will reduce to a marginal risk. I don't see why
they would be the target, but there's no way to
forget criminal justice. The entire justice system can one percent
(27:21):
prevent and now, of course they could one hundred percent
go after it would be very serious crime. So it's
the same kind of disincentive as how do you get
keep a judge or a US attorney. You know, we
used to have Marshall protections, et cetera. But it's it's
I have no good answer for you.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
They can't send them home with security.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Sure, Oh no, no, no. When I say good answer, I
mean fool. How are they going to keep them safe?
I mean literally, if Trump world they're what they want
to do.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Is starts boxing them or something.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
That's all I'm saying. Of course, they're the equivalent of
double locks on the door and burglar alarms and buzzers
and stuff. But I think that the literal answer to
your question is they can't. They can just they can
reduce the risk, and you know, these guys could leave
New York, but no one's hopefully gonna do that. I
just think that during these few weeks, there's been a
few of our peers who have been distinguished by the
(28:14):
glowers they seem to draw personally from Trump and the
personal messages. You know, it's kind of a resume builder.
But there's been real questions among our are we in danger?
I don't put myself in that category. And the short
answer is, you know, look, if some crazy person hears
from channels with aluminum foil the voice of Donald Trump saying.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Go, got that out, we don't need to tempt fade here.
You go, Okay, ask me a question.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Go so, I'm really intrigued. You said, you fucking hate poles,
and I do too, But I also think I but
we as really don't fucking understand poles, and we're gonna
make so we're gonna learn a lot about it, just
social scientists over the next several years, but especially this
whole problem that it seems like all the action for
(29:04):
Trump is at the level of social media and things
that just don't actually register in the typical polls. But
you said, I'm talking now about your piece, really great piece,
by the way, the Vanny Fair piece. Everybody checked. It's
out the panic of the polls. But anyway, you said, look,
Nikki Hagey's zombie campaign still getting more thin ten percent
(29:25):
of the vote. Biden seems to be pulling better among
those who are likely to actually show up. But just
I want to zero in on the point that the
polling industry just doesn't seem to have the real precision
of access to, as you put a people's political persuasions
and habits that tech companies do. So, you know, are
(29:47):
these are the pollsters you think overestimating mega members commitment
actually shown up for their guy? You know? Is does
that lesson? I don't think we can calibrate it yet,
but the do you think in general it points toward
hidden good news for Biden.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, so this is what I would say, Yes, pollsters
have a big problem.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
It's actually a good question.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
You were going, yeah, no, Well.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
It's actually something I spent a lot of time thinking about.
So posters don't have a great pulse on what's happening,
but what's happening here is actually something different. So in
twenty sixteen, and again, posters will tell you they weren't wrong,
but they were wrong. They were really, really really wrong.
They were wrong. And from that they extrapolated Hillary Quinn
as a ninety nine point nine percent or an eighty
(30:34):
nine percent chance of winning.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
And then during the evening eighty seventy you watched it
like the oxygen level dropping it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, so that was a real polling error. And since
then what they've done and part of the reason that
was a polling error, not to make excuses for them,
but this is actually was not their fault. Was that
Trump voters were a group of low frequency voters who
you couldn't pull because he didn't think they existed. And
that was what Kelly and Conway said about these hidden
(31:04):
Trump voters. They were hidden because they weren't voters. They
were just people who usually didn't vote. But Trump had
this populist message which they responded to, and that happened
in twenty sixteen, and that also happened in twenty twenty.
But it doesn't happen in the midterms. Those people don't
come out for anyone else. Trump Ism does not scale.
So you know, maybe you win a primary, but like
(31:24):
a really good example is Jade Vance in Ohio, Ruby
red state running you know, trumpy Trump and trump Asaurus
running ten points behind the partisan lean because ultimately it
doesn't work for anyone else. It only works for Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, I mean in Ohio, the guy who was just
a friend of mine lost the U to the wine
had more votes than anybody who's ever had, but the
wind somehow, these hidden Trump voters came out and just
new voters put the wine over the top.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Same thing with Vans, right, but usually that doesn't happen, right,
and Vans still ran behind the partisan lane. So what
I would say is that my guess is what these
posters are doing. And Nate Cohen wrote very smartly about
this other times, they're trying to estimate whether or not
this group comes out. I think they will come out.
(32:16):
But the question is because you know, remember a million
Americans died of COVID, and even if I know, that
was three years ago, so no one remembers, but that
was a million people, and so maybe a lot of
those people were older. It doesn't matter. If your grandmother
refuse to get vaccinated and then died of COVID, do
(32:37):
her five grandchildren run out and vote for Trump. It's
an open question. Maybe they think COVID is a you know,
racist can I mean, maybe they have some racist way
to make it work for them, but you could see
that that could actually theoretically hurt him. But the other
thing that I think is really still possible. It's just
(32:57):
really hard to square what the unpredictable voters will do.
And if you look at the bottom of the ticket,
which I think is really where the action is happening,
these Democratic senators are running way ahead, like I saw
Tammy Baldwin running twelve points ahead and swing state Wisconsin,
(33:18):
so I think there's some sorcery going on and trying
to measure these Trump voters. I have a lot of
trouble imagining a voter coming out voting for Tammy Baldwin
and then voting for Trump. Not impossible, but feels like
a stretch.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, you know, Mollie, like well as always, I think
we cover from the what you cover, from the sort
of daily to the more profound national trends and really
that you know, the things that are growth. Sorcery is
is such a perfect word for what seems to be
going on. You know, presumably the magic will reveal itself
(33:54):
not to be magic, but right now I'm not sure
how and why. So that'll keep me biting my name
else for the next six months.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
And you and I both agree that we don't know
what we don't know, and we'll know a lot more in.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
November, there's an end. Look forward to the next Molly mashup.
Thanks a lot and a big week.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Ben Smith is the
editor of Semaphore. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ben.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Smith, thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
You're here ostensibly to promote a podcast, but I'm going
to ask you lots of out the questions, but first
you can tell us about the podcast. It's a media podcast.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, the people seem to care a lot about media.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
The last gasps of a dying industry. I it's like
a snuff film.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Oh god right, Molly, No, it's I like, I kind
of hate that whole like colagulating journalism thing. No, I mean,
I think the thing about media is that it is
both grim and boring if you think of it as
a sort of small, dying industry. But it's in a
huge story if you think about it, as it cuts
into politics, into culture, into technology, and it lends on
(35:03):
all of those stories. And so we're launching a show
called Mixed Signals. Naima Raza and I will be co
hosting it some help from Max Tani, Samaphore's great media editor,
to sort of tell those stories about what is happening
behind the scenes, as it affects things that actually matter,
as it affects national politics, as it affects Hollywood and
the culture and things we really care about. And I
(35:24):
think that's you know that to me, that's really one
of one of the biggest stories of this media age,
and so we're excited about it. And I think there
is this sort of lingering sense that I think everybody
has that there's some kind of conspiracy that media is
a bit of a conspiracy, that people are making decisions
that are in some sense manipulative, or that something's happening
behind the scenes. I think what's so interesting about covering
it is that in some ways media is a conspiracy,
(35:45):
but often it's particularly a conspiracy to make money and
not a very good one, and actually understanding how decisions
are being made is often very interesting and often very
different from what you would think from the outside.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I listened to on the Media that podcast from w
Andy See, which is really really smart. They had a
podcast yesterday, but I think it was like two weeks
ago or whatever, because you know, the timing of when
these drop is not, you know, it doesn't totally line
up and they talked about how much a lot of
tech journalism has been really celebrating advancement without providing a
(36:21):
lot of pushback, and then most AI coverage seems to
do a similar like AA is going to change our lives.
AI is fire and not been critical enough. That strikes
me as like maybe a larger problem too when it
comes to coverage.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
That strikes me as a pretty broad generalization and maybe
a story that was true fifteen years ago. I mean,
the sort of interesting story about tech coverage, I think
is how hard it turned against the technology industry kind
of during the social media era and during the Trump era,
and kind of how hostile the industry has become to
the people who cover it. I mean, I agree with you,
there is a certain amount of and honestly a certain
amount of justified like, hey, this shure is coverage of AI,
(37:01):
because you know, at the core of a lot of
technology coverage is and ought to be an excitement about technology,
and a lot of tech reporters have that. But I
actually find that we have sometimes imported the criticisms of
social media into coverage of AI in a way that
doesn't make all that much sense, Like they're just very
different the threats posed b AI are quite different.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
So i'd actually I think I don't buy that.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
In fact, it's like one of the great things is
that you can just have an avatar go on podcasts
so you don't have to. I'm really a big fan
of AI, and particularly for that use case.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I think you're kidding, but I can't.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Tell I'm kidding. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Sorry, Okay, how do you think that's unfair? A pushback
on something that none of us really know what it's
going to do. I mean, I'm just curious, Like I
love when people come on my podcast and I'm happy
to have you and not your AI version.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Yeah, that's the thing. Podcasting is the last use case
for humans.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Actually, again, like that would make AI kind of bad.
I mean maybe I am just not as smart as
you are, but I just assume that being replaced. I mean,
we're seeing these summations now of pieces written. You know,
now there are summaries of pieces. I mean, doesn't that
strike you as like the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
You do, know?
Speaker 5 (38:14):
I mean I think I guess from my perspective when
it comes to journalism, particularly like again, I think there
are lots of really scary things. I think some of
the kind of really growth tesque sexual harassment and defix
that AI can do are just incredibly disturbing. The sort
of you know, I think there's a sort of general
undermining people's broad shared idea of truth that is incredibly disturbing.
I think there are there are really negative things. But
(38:34):
also when it comes to journalism in particular, journalists you know,
have been complaining about the birth the growth of new
technology since you know, probably the printing press. But the
main thing I use AFI for every day is transcribing interviews.
I suspect you guys too, Like my least favorite part
of journalism was doing an interview for an hour and
that's spent two hours typing it up. I don't think
anybody feels that that is a great loss to the
(38:55):
profession that you're not doing that. I suspect there's editing
of this show that gets you.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
And actually like the way in which AI is actually.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
Manifesting itself in newsrooms, I mean sort of more sophisticated
spell checking. Like I don't think anybody thinks Grammarly is
going to be on the street corners murdering people. But
you probably did reduce the number of copy editors in
the business.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
Right right now, the.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Way these tools are being used in newsrooms is really
helpful and allows us to do more of the kind
of stuff we want to do, which is trying to
figure out what's really happening, talking to other human beings
and leaving the boring stuff to the AI. And I
guess I don't really think that either your job of
helping people figure out the world and explaining it to
them in a nuanced and human way, or my job
(39:35):
of trying to get people to tell me information are
really at risk. And maybe that's sort of self centered,
but that is how I see it.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
No I agree, and Jase uses in AI software to
edit this and to get rid of noise, and I
certainly agree. As a dyslexic who is violently very dyslexic,
the improvement in spellcheck has been humongous for me, so
I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
So you also welcome our new overlords.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Basically, my question is more like, should we be pushing
back more all the time? For example, I had on
this podcast Jim Hines, who I really like and who
is a Democrat and who is very smart, and who
comes from Connecticut and lives in coscop And I said
to him, you know, you guys don't regulate anything, right,
(40:24):
you didn't regulate any technology. And you know when you
say that to a member of Congress, they always say, well,
the First Amendment. And I'd say, the First Amendment doesn't
have anything to do with regulating technology.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
You say, what about the Second Amendment?
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Right?
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Right? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (40:37):
No.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
But I mean the reality is Congress gave up on
trying to regulate technology. And they did that because they
were like low key, they didn't want to. It was
too many problems. If you look at Europe, like there's
actual fullsome regulations, they haven't stopped some of the problems.
And look, Europe is a much different regulatory environment. But
like to a certain extent, Congress has fallen as sleep
(41:00):
on the switch in certain ways.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
It's a strange story.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Imagine a world where technology started. You know, we went
onto the internet, we lost newspapers, and Congress said, okay,
two percent of all pre tax earning or even post
tax earning that tech companies make must be put in
nonprofit funds for local news like something, you know, one percent,
(41:26):
zero point five percent of the five hundred billion dollars
that Elon Musk made. I mean, because remember Elon Musk
made all of this money on these sort of regulatory
tax bonuses for doing environmental stuff right like he has.
He is like a guy who got government handouts. But
the government handouts went to oil companies and went to
(41:49):
people like Elon and didn't go to people like the
main daily reporter. I'm just saying, like Congress had an
opportunity to not crush the news industry, right, and they
didn't take it.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
I hate to say this as a journalist, but I'm
not sure this is totally about us in the news industry.
And to me, the core deal, which is a pretty
weird deal, is that we both got all of the companies,
all of the jobs, all of the growth, and all
of the wealth created, and we got to be the
like laboratory where all the damage got done. And then
the Europeans came in got, by the way, none of
(42:22):
the wealth, none of the great job growth, none of
the companies. But also they get to write they regulate
us and themselves, and that is essentially the unspoken deal
is that we get we get the business and the
companies and the damage and they get neither, I think,
and I do think that's fundamentally the deal that Congress
made with not regulating these companies. It has costs and benefits,
and I think they're both pretty substantial.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
So let's talk about the election coverage right now. You know,
we're a country of three hundred million plus, right, three
hundred and fifty million, three hundred and thirty million. It's
a lot of people, like maybe at most twenty million
people read in newspapers, magazines, maybe a little more than
watch cable news, you know, maybe a little more than
that watch network news. So do you think we have
(43:05):
any influence on them anymore?
Speaker 5 (43:07):
It's such a strange question this election. It's interesting because
I'm also obsessed with this and for this first episode
of Mixed Signals, I just just this morning went down
to the courthouse just a couple of blocks from here,
where there's a massive, you know, classic trial of the
century media circus with you know, dozens and dozens of
cameras and dozens of fifteen satellite trucks. And we went
and I went and found our old friend Maggie Haberman,
who's standing online, you know, at seven in the morning,
(43:30):
task through that like you know, is anybody learning anything
you go into this court and you cover this trial,
and then and then what right is there anything new?
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Is it change? Is anybody's mind being changed? On our
own mind being changed?
Speaker 5 (43:40):
Or does everybody in America basically feel one way or
the other that you get who these people are, you
get who Donald Trump is, and so you're not paying
that much attention to this incredible, historic, dramatic spectacles. Very
I agree, it's an utterly strange situation.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
So how do you think these people are getting their news?
Which people it's three hundred and forty five million people
on the storytry who don't read the New York Times.
How do you think they're getting their news?
Speaker 5 (44:04):
That is a harder question to answer than it has
been since the nineteenth century because they're basically from the
kind of proliferation of newspapers, penny dailies and things in
the second half of the nineteenth century through not that long ago.
The big story was consolidation, was more and more people
getting their information from fewer and fewer places. You know,
big national television networks replacing local ones, big national newspapers
(44:28):
displacing local ones, and then big social media companies and
big centralized platforms replacing everything. And then the story of
the last few years has been this crazy fragmentation and
people moving out to.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Smaller and smaller places.
Speaker 5 (44:40):
I mean audio is actually the most interesting example of that,
where tens of thousands of people listened to an array
of shows where they're each you know, finding people who
they really find valuable and helpful, but there's no dominant player.
In fact, there was a Pew study that said they
asked people, who's your favorite podcast? Among people who have
a favorite podcast, what's your favorite podcast?
Speaker 4 (45:00):
Pictively? The answer was Joe Rogan.
Speaker 5 (45:01):
But the most interesting thing about that was it was
Joe Rogan at five percent. So you got a market
where the number one player is five percent and everything
else is smaller. And that's just a situation which you
get on the subway and you have no idea what
the person sitting across from you has in their ears,
whereas five years ago you get in the subway and like,
it's Facebook, right, and so they're ten years ago. And
so there has I think been this big shift that
(45:22):
makes the landscape way harder to understand because you just
it's it's splintered.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
So how do you think people get their news. I mean,
Joe Rogan is millions of people, right, just.
Speaker 5 (45:31):
So like Fox News and the big broadcast networks you know,
will reach between maybe three and ten million a night,
and that's that's something Rogan, you know, maybe a vaguely
similar number. Lots of people a bit fewer than that.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
So say, Joe Rogan is twenty, Fox is four.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
Right, But these listens, I'm just listens, Like what gets
counted as a view on YouTube is much much smaller.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Okay, Howard Stern is eighteen.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Those are much smaller numbers than what gets counted as
a view on television. So there's it's hard these numbers
don't really make sense to either. But nobody is anywhere
close to the scale of what CBS News had twenty
years ago. Everything is smaller.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Right, So there definitely are millions of people on TikTok.
Speaker 5 (46:11):
Enormous numbers of people on TikTok, but again being kind
of micro targeted with the thing that they're looking for
and having the news reflected to them as what TikTok
is great at telling them exactly what they want.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
By the Chinese government.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yes, by our friends that by dents, yes.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Which is owned by the Chinese government.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
No, mostly it is just holding a mirror up to
you and telling you exactly and giving you exactly what
you want.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
That's what that machine does.
Speaker 5 (46:35):
Maybe it hasn't been proven the Chinese government puts its
thumb on the scale would not particularly surprise me. But
if young people are being told that the Palestinian side
is correct, it's mostly because that's what they want to hear.
And I don't really think the idea that tip people
are being brainwashed on there. We're all kind of the
beauty of social media as we get to wash our
own brands.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
I don't think anyone thinks that people are being brainwashed.
I mean, I don't know. Maybe there are people who
think that, but I mean, with all of this, it's
not just TikTok, it's also Instagram and Facebook. I mean,
there are opportunities for transparency with the algorithm that we
have not been given. Right.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
No thinks have been getting less transparent for as long
as I've covered these companies. In twenty twelve, there was
a site called your open Book where you could search
Facebook and see what people were talking about on there.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
And Facebook cut that.
Speaker 5 (47:19):
Off from the API and progressively, all of these companies
have released less and less and less data because they
don't like the media coverage of what is actually happening
on them.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Right, we have so many people in this country, So
say there are three hundred million people who are just
not interacting with traditional news at all. I mean at
least one hundred and fifty million of those people will vote.
Speaker 5 (47:42):
Yeah, but the biggest sources of sort of non big
mainstream media are the local television news, local radio. I mean,
voters are disproportionately older and being reached by these older forms.
So like, among the biggest of these small and medium
sized things are still, you know, along with deranged streams
on rumble or YouTube, are a lot of fairly normy stuff.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
You know, a lot of targeting stuff.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
Moms on Instagram, a lot of it's just you know,
it's splintering without I think the social media age really
elevated hyperpartisan voices, and that was what worked for the
sort of engagement metrics of Facebook. I think that's less
true enough. I think it's just a legitimate sprit splintering
that's spreading further probably further right, further left, but also
all along the middle of that spectrum in a way
(48:27):
that if you're writing about it, you are sort of
operating in the dark in a way that is disorienting
for me a list.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Do you feel that the traditional media though we have
become such an incredibly small piece of the pie, right
and we have such a small reach.
Speaker 5 (48:42):
It's funny that we're saying we you a podcaster, me
running a new website.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Well, I am an editor of Fanny Fair. I'm a
true official correspondent at a Condie Nast magazine.
Speaker 4 (48:52):
You got to foot in both worlds.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
My podcast is from a podcast company called iHeartRadio, So
I mean, I don't think that's true. Is not that?
And you worked at the New York Times for many
years and have a media startup called Temophore. So if
we're not the mainstream media, I don't know who is, man.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
I think it's the New York Times.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
Molick, No, But I'm just saying I think there's a
there's sort of a wide spectrum and a lot of
and even the question of what is mainstream is is
kind of disputed. Like you know, the like iHeart is
a great example, Like that's a company that does a
bunch of great podcasts that built around the House Stuff
Works podcast. That's sort of what built that company at first,
and where the sort of people running it come from,
which I think I don't really think of a mainstream
(49:33):
or political right. That's just sort of a great popular
show that I hope is running promos for this podcast
on its big network, and I think the lines have
really blurred, actually quite a bit between what's what's considered
traditional media and what's new media, making all of this
more confusing.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
Thank you, Ben Smith, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
No moment Jesse Cannon by John Fast the reaction to
the trumpert you predicted it hot. I mean, you don't
have to be a psychic to know exactly how this
is going to go. Donald Trump will degrade the rule
of law, rail against the judiciary, say the judge was corrupt,
(50:15):
and in fact he did all of the things we
thought he would because Donald Trump has about four plays
and he always does pretty much the same thing, no
matter what the situation is. And that, my friends, is
our moment of Fuckeray. That's it for this episode of
(50:35):
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to
hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all
this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And
again thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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